Tag Archives: Work

We must turn the power and resources of our private enterprise system to the underdeveloped nation within our midst. This should be done by bringing into the ghettos themselves productive and profitable private industry – creating dignified jobs, not welfare handouts, for the men and youth who now languish in idleness.

Make gentle the life of this world

The jobs have fled to the suburbs, or have been replaced by machines, or have moved beyond the reach of those with limited education and skills …

The fact is, if we want to change these conditions – those of us here in this room, those of us who are in the establishment, whether it be business, or labour, or government – we must act. The fact is that we can act. And the fact is also that we are not acting.

Make gentle the life of this world

Our society – all our values, our views of each other, and our own self-esteem; the contribution we can make to ourselves, our families, and the community around us – all these things are built on the work we do. But too many of the inhabitants of these areas are without the purpose, the satisfaction, or the dignity that we find in our work.

Make gentle the life of this world

And there are others: on the back roads of Mississippi, where thousands of children slowly starve their lives away, their minds damaged beyond repair by the age of four or five; in the camps of the migrant workers, a half million nomads virtually unprotected by collective bargaining or social security, minimum wage or workmen’s compensation, exposed to the caprice of fate and the cruelty of their fellow man alike; and on Indian reservations where the unemployment rate is 80 percent, and where suicide is not a philosopher’s question but the leading cause of death among young people.

Make gentle the life of this world

And the effects of the shortage of meaningful employment are reinforced by a welfare structure which is frequently destructive both of individuals and of the community in which they live.

More basically, welfare itself had done much to divide our people, to alienate us one from the other. Partly this separation comes from the understandable resentment of the taxpayer, helplessly watching your welfare rolls and your property tax rise. But there is greater resentment among the poor, the recipient s of our charity. Some of it comes from the brutality of the welfare system itself: from the prying bureaucrat, an all powerful administrator deciding at his desk who is deserving

“The free play of economic forces will not by itself automatically overcome these difficulties. Regulative measures by the community are needed to bring about a sound distribution of labour and consumption goods among mankind; without them even the people of the richest countries will suffocate. The fact is that since the amount of work needed to supply everybody’s needs has been reduced through the improvement of technical methods, the free play of economic forces no longer produces a state of affairs in which all the available labour can find employment. Deliberate regulation and organisation are becoming necessary to make the results of technical progress beneficial to all.”

Finally having had my last round of meetings and with whatever information I was going to be able to get, gotten I was able to offer my conclusion.

The criteria had been around for ages, they were clear all that I needed to do with see if anything had altered and I found little had.

There is only fear and possibly pragmatism to keep me rather than go for the unknown. There is much to be said for pragmatism, if I were someone else I might well be pointing me at it.
This will be the second time I have had a job floated before me only to turn away, I told myself last time I would play the long game.

I haven’t. My employer has 2 years in it before they look to sell up, I could have stayed for those two years, I probably would have if only they had been able to offer a reason. Instead the only reason & it’s a fair one, was because the alternative is loosing your job like it was last time.

I can see I may regret this – a little anxiety simmers but on the flip side this evening is different, for the first time in ages I don’t feel tired or weighted. For now it’s a relief. I know yet underestimate the pressure of indecision and uncertainty as well as the pressure of unemployment to take that which comes along.

Work is done, IT support managing to phone just as I was shutting down and headed in a timely fashion toward the exit.

I minor delay as I explained what was wrong, it was very much the same thing that has been wrong for around 2 month, 6/7 support tickets and 5/6 calls. It was a brief explanation, then off to the Piccadilly line, Heathrow Terminal 4, the one that was the new one for quite along time until they went and build another and renuilt 2.

There is a freshness issue brought along by a seat neighbour but it’s running and I’m at Osterley .. Not heard of it but it’s only 5 more stations.

The work meeting provided no answers and am effectively none the wiser but that’s not a thing for now – now Amsterdam and all that whatever this will bring looms .. A nice quiet trip to Pizza Hut, maybe some balloons, suddenly has enticing writen all over it.

Hounslow 3 more stations and the man with the staleness cloud has disembarked himself, breathing is a whole new experience.
Must have been a real treat sat near me on the trains on Sunday on the way home after football, stewing in the Regent’s Park adorning kit, sharing.

Wondering what food they have in the departure hall, been a while .. And hoping I did pack the boarding card and passport… I’ve checked, more than once but that was another moment and you never can be too sure especially when one is a true master of loosing stuff. Both of the two things could be considered stuff and therefore must be viewed as at risk. Still not checking it again – not now – no point.. just about there, 1 station .. the problem will be comsiderable either way if we’ve parted ways somehow, somewhen..

Liverpools most useless of managers is inspiring sterling must stay – he has a contract – it’s true.. He does … Not sure how that serves to resolve matters other potentially one more reason being eeked out..
It would certainly preferable if ot were the other way around..

Heathrow

There is a pret .. Pret the familiar .. pret the London infester – but pret the actually pretty good.. And while outside of an airport a very mid market sort of sand which option, within such little close of world, with its ever fixed price a veritable bargain of foods.

There are it seems a lot of flights to Amsterdam – most popular if spiradically times route. But for the 18:30 inclined traveler, options be abound.

Fokker 70 – quite big and not the largest.
In way of evidence that we may not be the first to have struck upon the notion of Amsterdam based stag trips, others are unashamedly strutting through the cabin adorned in novelty clothing.. One in particular..
Someone got up and shouted my name randomly as some people entered .. It came directly from behind me so I turned .. I know that one of the other unfamiliar members of the soon to be assembled collective is a fellow traveller on this flight and couldn’t fathom if this were a wholly random event, or if that was the name of the tall but no longer young chap then wondering into the plane .. I presumed it was the latter .. Given the lack of subsequent interaction I can only deduce this was not the case

May and it will not be long until Oscar marries, it’s come round quick which shouldn’t be a surprise and always is. Today it’s the commencement of his stag weekend, a bank holiday elongated stag weekend in Amsterdam. It’s very tedious and a bit socially unacceptable of me but in not looking forward to it. It could so very likely become just a tad to untoward for my slowing and never were too vigorous tastes.

When I first met Oscar he was a lairy sort under the influence, settling down in recent times but some of his old acquaintances (whom mostly I do not personally know) have a reputation for not having relinquished such inclinations at the door.

Trepidation. Fuelled on my side by some amount of ropiness which has manifested itself as Fatigue, confusion, a most unvarnished guard and some digestive system discomfort. The merest decline in energy levels and the speed of mental recoil is pronounced, requiring not the challenge of weekends such as this.

On the flip side- going abroad, somewhere I’ve not visited before, I was not burdened with a wide variety of other plans… The question how socially acceptable is it to go away but only participate in the more sober and pedestrian activities?
Other friends have gotten married but their stag things were not nights/weekends in the way this is, the rules are unclear.

First though to work and another meeting to discuss the future. Having. Discussed it at some length with my boss at the beginning of the week it’s now my bosses boss… I don’t see myself staying really, pragmatically I probably should and go with it regardless but I don’t really believe in their project, lofty ambitions beyond the spheres of probable reality and moderate to slender resourcing, the reality gap is rather large.

My boss is leaving and my natural inclination is to follow, not in the general sense but in the specific sense of this role. Better to be one of the many in a pleasant land than a price of a sprawling baron desert.

Still we will see. My cv has been changeable (job wise) and while my boss was in place I’d not looked at other roles. I have now started to (most moderately) but now or rather when I get back from Amsterdam this will have to be taken more seriously. It’s defiantly time for something newer, my understanding of digital is quite well settled in after all those inadvertent years working in it, repeating, comfortable. The uncomfortable notion of the salary reducers looms as fresher areas are sought out, the question that casts the biggest shadow though- what?

Political jobs would be ideal but I’m labour and the Labour Party is a clique, a club and inward looking network or rather two invested looking networks – the central party and the local parties – both quite different in many ways but both highly old fashioned, out dated and out of touch, there is something of the old club about them where you pass through the rooms depending upon family, acquaintances, longevity and toil. The first two are more for the central party and the latter for the local. Toil and longevity are certainly more rational and worthy reasons given that no party can function without its loyal activists working to it’s cause.
It’s so dammed interminably tedious though, the meetings they go on and on and on and on some more – as near as my wilted concentration levels can tell mostly about remarkably little.

There is no objectivity or professionalism or efficiency about any of it, maybe that’s how it’s meant to be but to add to the list of 22nd of May grumbles I really am not in agreement with it. Part of me has long thought a new pan European affiliated party built on activism and more modern social tools was needed. The Labour Party resists change so diligently and nothing so good at this really comes to benefit from it, the world moves on and leaves it behind.

If I worked for them I would not stop in pursuing change, the energy I had for work would not be a surface exercise fuelled by interest in the puzzle but a routed and meaningful interest in the outcome. That said the party is probably more inclined to irrelevance than to change, aside from perhaps espousing some more conservative styled policies to appease the inherently right leaning southern England populous. Change the figure head and the policies but not the operational infrastructure or 1950s apparatus.

What this really needs is a distant railing against on an obscure web page with all the prethought of a Friday morning stop off commute to Heathrow.

The smell of the hospital – detergent bleach and sanitiser, the overly warm and stagnant air, not a fan. And that’s not to mention the assorted failing conditions of the inhabitants. It selfishly doesn’t suit me to be confronted with such things.

An inaccurate subject for an entry – something to do with Have I Got New For You, commentary at the delayed publishing time

The attendants seem to think my grandfather like their residents and repeat things at him slowly with volume, he doesn’t seem to take offense. Saying that’s it fine for him to go sit about in this place, he’d just have to take to shaking a bit and the reasoners would readily mistake him for one of them.

The question often asked is what is keeping my grandmother alive, the dementia completed its victory in the last couple of years after about a decade. Between that and whatever cocktail of meds she’s on for the Parkinson, dementia assortment of conditions, there not really any sign of what sort of amounts to a person. Though occasionally out of the nothing she will offer a response, mostly just a yes, to something she might just have overheard. It need not make sense but it does beg the wonder who or how remains trapped in there.

In the canteen some chap is playing a version of a squeeze organ, I think it must be a simplified type for every time he restarts it’s only to unleash a rather familiar selection of notes in an equally familiar sequence and tempo. Something about hilly countries and their musical proclivities.

Yesterday ended up watching Berlin bank holiday festivities, TV offering – not wholly by choice – can only conclude 99 red balloons in its original form is unquestionably the stand out German language contribution to ‘contemporary’ music, as well as the only one to be set to the none conferment singular background beat & they’ve turned up in their masses … A great economy and manufacturing industries .. Guess it had to be off set by something, for gods sake take their 80s electrical organs / any potentially remotely ‘music’ emitting instruments away …

I made the customary aubergine bake before leaving, slowly it’s becoming close to a traditional part of such break. More chill escaped the pot than was intended, as I sought to compensate for the jumbo tomato tin. Not a problem for me but I have memories of my grandfather mentioning previous versions were hot and how he liked it hot. They were not so very hot but this is a relative matter of taste and the fact it had been noted was more suggestive that it was sub optimally hot and was in fact not liking it quite so much as moderately struggling with it.
Too late, it did have a spiced taste to it, perhaps the cheese on melting might moderate it, who knew what the right amount of hot was.

Returning back to the oven mid-cooking, when attention was not being paid, the fridge was light on milk it transpired, so I added some single cream to the top and pocked at it, so that the white puddles submerged.

Further covert amends would not be possible, we’d been into town for a replacement DVD player so lunch was already later than usual and pooh bears stomach had not seen this go unnoticed. The oven spent the last 29 minutes of its cut short cooking time being stared out, while I was left to simply how for the best.

The traditional behaviours of men folk are bizarre, it’s a conclusion I find equally but differently true for other social segments. My grandfather describes times his brother, giving him a lift decided that a tram stop somewhere close to the route home would quite suffice. It’s practically true but where was the need, traffic is a minimal issue, the other persons in your car, it just seems all together unnecessary. Yet it’s not an unusual behaviour, I’ve never noticed it so much among my friends but only one generation back and it’s prevalent enough. Social autism on a bizarrely and peculiar scale. I have my own share of this I’m sure enough but can’t quite fathom what all this is about. While so many others are infinity interesting in offering contributions but take little in the way of direction or information from inbound information or even retorts. Sometimes it’s like they could do just as well engaging with a wall in an echoey environment. This last bit of the behaviour is more than alive and kicking, I think it’s catching. As I observe myself I find like quicksand I’m being drawn with time into such ways, it’s not ideal, so much more can be gleaned from listening than from offering. Something to watch. Something to attempt to work on, poor habits have a slide like quantity.

Having been watching house during quieter spots devoid of the no longer working football manage I have started to ponder on some similarities. I’ve had to consider what a team that I would assemble might look like, interesting mix of intellect, deceit and manipulation may be beyond my means but I seem to have very much gone for House inspired team shape.

One or two person to be practical and attached to realities of the day, one to push at the more interesting and challenge and at least on of these to also be accustomed and able to mitigate for my apparently difficult to follow communication and people engagement styles. A challenger, a pragmatist and humaniser, but when all said and done the statement I unwittingly offered on this covers it, people to argue with me. People whose contribution will optimise my own input, I wonder if such a self orientated strategy is quite right, I would in that scenario be a fixed variable but nothing is ever quite so one dimensional.

There is one person at work who we ought to try to retain in my view but I can’t come up with a way, their role will no longer be and that’s a pretty hard fact, there are others but the team will be small. Attitude, willing and approach are so key it would be a shame to loose someone who has these. Not seeing an option, for now I send emails congratulating the team on the unexpected turn around and buying post holiday my chocolates, any such thanks or well doing is infinitely premature but should this be kept up, then there won’t be people to offer such thoughts to come a more rational time frame. I am being to nice on things, to quick to pat backs and too peaceable about shortcomings, but objectively the time for such adjustments has gone, why not try to be pleasant, i can honestly say I sad see little to be served by by being otherwise, I may still fail.

It’s time to head home. They are boarding the plane and the inexplicable and inexplicably irritating sight of people queuing and not always politely to be allowed to join the queue on the finger dock to board a plane upon which their departure time and seat are long since predetermined. What is wrong with all these people, I’ve stood in that finger dock queue inadvertently many times, it’s just not that amazing.

If I had to sit on a baggage rack without a reserved seat the short duration of such flight would make this perfectly acceptable and little more of an endurance than the delights of train commuting on s poor day, but that just not going to happen. They irritate these people with their behaviour founded on no discernible rational, they shouldn’t, they are quite entitled but they do, they really really do.

The first of may 2015
The weather is properly Mingin in Switzerland a description my phone disagrees with. It a bank holiday here and nothing much is about to happen at all, the TV has been switched from orchestral musical offering to a Phil Collins / genesis offering from yester/yesteryear if the wall of organs and superabundance of hair is anything to go by.

The updates have been coming out of London, performance numbers for the month of April, now that it is done.
At this moment I’m not sure what to make of them, 5% above target and a big day yesterday, on a Thursday, why? It seems like an improbable sprint to the line where a staggering across personal best close to the target was all that we had reason to expect.

Never been much for the daily trading numbers, still not really, they can drive poor short termist thinking that tempt poor quality thinking. Two good month and an upward trajectory is needed though, to keep belief and push on, doubt would not be helpful right now. Like the manager of a football team on the brink of relegation whose team start winning games after only a few tweaks, wondering on how phantom such turn around are, do mix with disbelief to dampen celebrations.

Plus in the real world more important matters draw close – more destruction of the instruments of civilisation with the conservatives vs the better side of people… The devil vs the angel on the shoulder … As a extreme … A week away

I was looking forward to this mini break and catching up on sleep, so far that’s worked out rather, with little of the morning being encountered by conscious thoughts. It may be a bit of a waste of valuable holiday but it’s not utterly without its merit.

We’re on the 10th floor, a duck chose a close proximity fly past, from the distance I could see it coming then zip past the large window, it was really travelling at quite the surprising pace.

Ecommerce is not in many ways a thing – it’s certainly not a profession, not like accountants, doctors or scientist. It’s frequented by a myriad of strays from assorted backgrounds, pulled close by its economic gravity.
The golden chicken that can be invested in as an all but certain means that isn’t, to a more profitable future.. placed into the hands of a working nation of chancers, buffoons and self congratulatory discoverers of notions long since realised but now offered up in a shiny new form.

The latter of these seeming to be the better of this accidental potentially lost selection.

The technical ones have a definable skillset probably even credentials – they are the closest thing to the legitimately qualified though far less able than many mechanics they are far better remunerated.
They did not mean to take this path they merely got tired of operating the milkshake dispensers, fancied a change .. Some are actually very good and this is a most ill founded slight upon their person.

Then you have the worst of them – the marketeers … Who because, presumably, a site consists largely of words and pictures, they feel a most ill advised justification in flocking across to an industry in which they are about as well suited as a tuna fish, set to the task of uncovering the next great efficiencies in arable farming.

This is not to say there are no good people in ecommerce, or to profess some great dislike .. this would not be true. It is the home to many, not necessarily well suited or well advised to be there, just sort of bumbling through… Not the view you would take if you were to observe the energetic term utterings of their enthusiastic linkedin sermons, with their regular news and updates. On average within a solid stint, in terms of progress, there are perhaps 2 or 3 significant changes that might occur in a fast moving 5 year stint .. and yet the ticker of ecom news never runs cold

I like to hope that this is not the level of uncertain blind mans buff self assurance that purveys all aspects of human life – medicine, rocket construction and general engineering – carlsburg – if ecom teams built shard like skyscrapers, they’d probably be the most hazardous ‘giant metallic dandelion blown in the wind’ skyscrapers in the world..

I like to hope this as I walk to work in the morning and watch the men in hard hats as vast building work objects swing from cranes and new structures are erected, as I sit on the train chuntering along, during those more operational moments .. Such things are not in question when encountering the almost unnatural science that is the uniformity of the PRET sandwich, though I’m tempted go believe the chicken classic of yesteryear came perhaps with greater amounts of Parmesan flourished upon it.. This may be incorrect .. There are so many times to hope and go be grateful for a certain level and standard to things

The sleepiness with which the day commenced was not soon dispersed, around 1ish had myself a twin teabag effort and that provided a modicum of bounce for a couple of hours, it did not taste good.

Offering via email from a team member

I suggested meeting up with a friend after work sometime this week and was suprised that today numbered among the two days they came back to suggest.. Today – a day of fogged up mental vacancy and bewilderment in which, for most of it I was all over the place. It was a bit of a relief when, having summoned sufficient thought to finally key in a response they then opted for the other of these days .. I would be quite the company – ever the erudite wordsmith and social raconteur this may well have been my finest hour.

It had its upside unperturbed or bothered by any of the events which unfolded, not that it was a day littered by bothersome occurrences.. The benefits of sleepwalking are maybe not circulated well enough.

The board meeting wasn’t – they had it while we were all out of the office last week & no one opted to convey that change of plan. On the plus side I know I did everything I could with the information available to me, so there is that & soon I will be off this train and able to take up a well practiced reasting stance upon the settee. That or I will wake up in Cambridge – the heater by my left leg is almost effective pumper of hot air and I will either sweat myself lighter or be coaxed into a premature nap.. Still I do like cambridge and it’s been a time since I made an inadvertent improtue visit there… The glory days of parliamentary bars and the beverages there in – the commuters hazard if you don’t live at the termination point.

I spent all weekend working on targets and interesting things like that, to plan the year that almost certainly won’t be.. It would not be unreasonable to question why then?

Today is to be quite a large and defining meeting day for the owning board of my employers and the jungle drums suggest that the message that they may not be about to turn certain aspects around is one finding a receptive audience now. Those parts which have produced with sterling predictability annual results that’s bore scant resemblance to any target or anything remotely within the sphere of progress..

Yet now I work on a plan for this thing – surrendered my weekend to it, didn’t even get around to watching episode 1 of the last season of the mentalist – a show certainly long past its best but none the less arguably a more productive use of time. There are however jobs to consider and I wanted to understand for myself to what extent thugs might be possible to be improved… The suppliers were meant to some back with their targets and plans.. Some sort of did but once again the ppc agency dos not – we took them on late last year, fwd3d and it’s hard to say whether they’ve been able to do a single thing right or even well. They are – words escape me – they’re nice guys, seem to work hard enough but I really don’t have the words. I didn’t bring them in, normally it would be easy to castigate that action but I did back their appointment in a precious job and now I’m left to wonder on how magically their sales people weave their golden shimmering web.

So that was my weekend there – first realising how useless they had been, then that they had no clue how to remedy it then attempting to do their work for them … They need to go … Though this may not be the time with everything that’s going on, I need to sit on my firing finger for now … But I don’t want to, oh no I didn’t have a weekend and I really want to ..

When finally I stopped working on the quarterly targets and plans to support them they were not done but it was quite late and what was done was better of being sent. The invention of lying was back on itv2 – it’s on their a lot – one of their favorite evening movies that’s on more often than die hard used to be back in the late 90s early 00s.

i always start watching it as well – Not one for watching DVDs more than once some films when on the TV seem to be excluded from this – the invention of lying is such a film. It was though already 1am and aside from wanting an hour of weekend to myself the thought of tomorrow morning absent sleep dogged me.

Why in films and on the TV do people read to people and why when they do that do they muster all of a couple of lines, not even close to a whole paragraph before calmly and slowly closing the book in a all together rather final way.. also they visit people, share one not particularly pressing thought and within minutes leaves again .. whenever i was participating in a visit it rarely passed off so swiftly and involved a considerable higher level of sitting, mental wanderings and time effecting hour treacle particles accosting all the ways of the world?

Indeed I have woken sleepy and in an unforgiving disposition that makes all but the practical voice want to walk up to Camden right now and dispatch that agency for a long walk into the desert, the level of fecklessness than can be bought for these generous agency fees is most generous. Though I’m hard pressed to come up with a none natural monopoly service provider or even oligopoly quite as incapable of doing what they, theoretically at least, exist to do, as this lot.. At least the development agency are fighting code first penned by those two chimps looking to pass the time on the good ship Noah.

Video most handily after the fact removed – no notion as to what this was meant to be …